


within the mist, with shadows stretching forth their claws

by RaisingCaiin



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Fall of Gondolin, Gondolin, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Quenya Names, Spirits, Winter, a little mystery - as a treat!, a little spookiness - as a treat!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:08:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28252158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaisingCaiin/pseuds/RaisingCaiin
Summary: Strange things happen in Nan Dungortheb, that dark valley and tangled forest where Aredhel and her escort from Gondolin find themselves during their travels.Strange things that may not let travelers leave in the same state that they arrived...
Relationships: Ecthelion of the Fountain & Glorfindel, Ecthelion of the Fountain/Glorfindel
Comments: 14
Kudos: 16
Collections: Tolkien Secret Santa 2020





	within the mist, with shadows stretching forth their claws

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ChrissyStriped](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChrissyStriped/gifts).



> For ChrissyStriped! 
> 
> Happy holidays, friend, and thank you for some *amazing* prompts - oh man, I had a hard time choosing from all of them! Eventually, though, I just had to go with: _Lords of Gondolin: Which or how many of the Lords you integrate is up to you. I just want to read more about Gondolin._
> 
> *clears throat* hope it's ok that part of the fic takes place beyond Gondolin, but they do end up back there eventually, and this way I was able to integrate more than one Lord!

Nan Dungortheb, the dark valley and tangled forest that stretches between the safety of Melian's Girdle about Doriath and the wretched foothills squatting beneath the Mountains of Terror, is not a place in which it is safe to linger – not even for such lords of Gondolin as Laurefindël and his companions are. In the time that they have spent here now, they have encountered no sign of other living creatures – not the track of a fox nor the slime of a snail, the caw of a crow – save the thorny trees that hunch and shiver about them and the fungi that snap beneath their horses' hooves. And yet, the very air is heavy with a damp fog and a wretched chill that weigh against skin and soul alike; probably dampening any sound or sign they might have caught anyway, Laurefindël thinks grimly. At times, his ears have begun straining against the gloom without Laurefindël's conscious direction, as if they can tell that something is moving just beyond the range of even his keen hearing; as if, if only he could focus sharply enough, then perhaps he could hear it too. . .

The Valley of Dreadful Death is aptly named, Laurefindël reflects bleakly. It is a dark place, a haunted place, for all that they'd thought they knew what to expect when they entered here at the lady Irissë's imperious direction. When barred from entering the kingdom of Doriath, nothing would do but she must take the shortest way around to reach her kinsmen's lands, no matter how fell the path they would follow along the way – and now here they are, the three warriors of her escort huddled atop their horses, having spent a frantic few hours seeking their lost princess.

"What are we to _do_ ," Ecthelion finally whispers. When Laurefindël looks over to his fellow lord and sometimes-lover, surprised to hear living speech suddenly pierce the dripping silence, he can see the whites of Ecthelion's eyes, the shallow rise and fall of Ecthelion's rapid breathing. He doubts that Ecthelion fears for their own safety; he is certain that Ecthelion fears for their lady's uncertain fate. "No one could survive in this hellish place alone!"

"Or together," Egalmoth says shortly, shifting in the saddle as he reins in his anxious horse. The further day draws on toward dusk, the more skittish their animals become; a bad sign among bad signs, to Laurefindël's mind.

"We must leave," Egalmoth continues. "Now, while we still can. I mislike everything about this place."

Laurefindël is still opening his mouth to respond – nominally, he _is_ the leader here, though all the lords of Gondolin are equals and Irissë could match any of them with sword or bow alike – but Ecthelion cuts in first. "We cannot just leave the lady lost in here, Egalmoth!"

"And what are you suggesting that we do, then?" Egalmoth retorts. Laurefindël watches, with a dreamlike detachment, as both his fellow lords' breath hangs in the air long after they have spoken: puffs of cloud pulled down to earth in this cold, dark place. "There is nothing for us to follow!"

Laurefindël cannot fault this assessment. One moment, Irissë had been riding out at the head of their party, exclaiming in quiet but fierce delight at the wild place into which she'd led them; then, between one step and the next, she had vanished into the darkness and the mists beyond, and they have encountered no sign of her since.

There are no tracks; no scraps of cloth, no mark of her horse's passage. There were no sounds; no shrieks, no cries, not even the dwindling sound of receding hooves. And a full day's search has turned up nothing more: the lady Irissë is simply _gone_. 

"Are _you_ suggesting we _retreat_?" Ecthelion asks, his voice a ferocious whisper as he leans forward over his horse's neck to jab furiously toward Egalmoth. "And leave Irissë to her fate here, whatever that might be?"

"Yes," Egalmoth says shortly, his speech always blunter and straighter than the fine curved sword hanging sheathed at his belt. "We have looked all day, Ecthelion, but I fear that the lady has vanished for good. Believe me, I will grieve her loss as much as the next soul, but – look, we will certainly perish here too if we remain as we are when night falls."

"Then we will perish here with her," Ecthelion retorts, his hand slipping to the hilt of his own sword in what Laurefindël thinks – _hopes_ – is an unconscious movement. Those of Turukáno's train have managed not to stain their hands with kin's-blood, and Laurefindël does not wish to see this change on his watch, or in such a dark place.

"For I will not return to Turukáno and tell him that we _lost_ his _sister!"_ Ecthelion continues, his voice rising to a dangerous pitch. Laurefindël is about to finally speak – to beg Ecthelion to hold his peace – when finally Nan Dungortheb offers them a crumb.

Something _snaps_ amongst the trees. Just at the edge of their hearing; far beyond their line of sight.

Wordlessly, Laurefindël hisses at Ecthelion for silence. Ecthelion, blanching at something Laurefindël cannot see, does as he is bid without another word.

The horses stamp and toss their necks, but, war-trained as they are, do not yet scream and do not yet bolt. One tense moment passes, and then another, as the three lords sit in petrified stillness, waiting to see whether Ecthelion's outburst has brought some unseen denizen of the Valley of Dreadful Death down upon them, but nothing emerges.

There is only the mist, swirling among the trees and between their mounts, then about and up their legs with all the over-bold familiarity of a daring courtesan. And even as he peers into the hunched and shivering trees, Laurefindël's knuckles blanch with the strain of reining in his charger; Egalmoth's mount stamps, more uneasy than his own, and Laurefindël knows that if the great horse bolts then there will be no stopping its flight.

Egalmoth's tense whisper finally shatters the uneasy peace. "Awfully bold of you to assume that we will live to see Turukáno again at all," he murmurs at Ecthelion, eyeing their environs uneasily. "Laurefindël. We must go."

" _Laurefindël_ ," Ecthelion hisses with equal heat. "We must stay! Whatever fell things lurk here, we will take them, but we must find the lady!"

"Laurefindël?" Egalmoth murmurs, and Ecthelion echoes, sounding outraged: "Laurefindël?!"

Laurefindël already knows that, whichever road he takes, death rides upon the heels of his choice. And his choice may alter nothing, in the end, unless he makes it swiftly.

His heart breaks for Irissë, but Laurefindël has known the truth for hours: they will not recover her here. And he thinks that all of them know this, even if not all of them can admit as much quite yet.

"We ride," he tells his fellow lords quietly. "And pray that we reach the edge of the forest again before nightfall."

Egalmoth nods shortly, his face revealing nothing so crass as relief, but Ecthelion looks mutinous, his lips pressed together in a thin white line as his gloved hands clench tight about his reins. Laurefindel must speak with him sharply before Ecthelion finally urges his horse forward, and even when they have struggled their way to the edge of Nan Dungortheb, slashing through grasping thorns and pushing through swirling mist every step of the way, Ecthelion actually pulls his charger to a halt and turns, there in his saddle, to look back at the forest with grief and rage shining in his eyes.

Egalmoth does not stop for even a breath, simply urging his horse into a canter as if putting as much distance between himself and that cursed place as he can. But Laurefindël slows and waits for Ecthelion to pull himself together enough to rejoin him; waits, just beyond the forest's edge, so that he can ride with his friend and sometime-lover as Ecthelion mourns the certain loss of their beloved lady.

"We did all that we could do," he tells Ecthelion softly, when finally the Lord of the House of the Silver Fountain turns away from the Valley of Dreadful Death. " _You_ did all that you could do."

For a moment Ecthelion looks as if there is something that he would say to this, but then a strange look that Laurefindël has never seen before steals across his face and he turns away from Laurefindël entirely.

" _I_ did not," Ecthelion says stiffly. A wisp of the mist curls about his riding boot for a moment longer, trailing after him like a spectral hand as Ecthelion finally wheels his horse about. Then Ecthelion is riding past Laurefindël as if Laurefindël were not even there, and he does not speak to either of his traveling companions again for the remainder of their journey home to the Walled City.

~ ~ ~

Turukáno mourns his sister's loss, as do his court, his people, and all the city. And eventually Turukáno calls for a year of mourning, in the new reckoning of time that is calculated by Arien's passage overhead, and no one questions this edict. Likewise, no one finds it odd when their king and his daughter and many of their lords continue to wear mourning colors for longer than the year thus mandated. 

But even through his tears, his grief, Turukáno is also quick to tell Laurefindël, Ecthelion, and Egalmoth that he does not lay the blame for this loss at their feet: he has known his sister and her temperament all too well to imagine that even they could have redirected Irissë once she set her mind to something. That was how she had left Gondolin in the first place, after all.

Egalmoth accepts Turukáno's disconsolate assurances with a stiff nod that any who did not know him might think coldness; but Laurefindël knows how deep and true his fellow lord's great feelings run, and he imagines that Egalmoth will mourn in private, will shroud his House of the Rainbow Arch and their joyous colors in darkness for more than the year that Turukáno has asked. And Egalmoth will carry, always, the burden of knowing that he had told them to turn back, even if it is Laurefindël who bears the burden of actually giving that command.

And Laurefindël himself remains at Turukáno's side for days, holding his king while he weeps and caring for young Itarillë between-times – including answering, as best he can with stumbling words and broken voice, the girl's soft questions about when her best-beloved aunt will be coming home.

But Ecthelion slips away. His House goes dark and his people grow somber, and Ecthelion comes no more to the Tower of the King unless summoned there by Turukáno himself. Laurefindël sees Ecthelion not at the market, nor festival days, nor council meetings, and even as he looks on, helpless, the one who was once his lover becomes as a stranger to him, for Ecthelion's eyes are cold and distant, looking right through Laurefindël whenever they two cannot help but meet. Egalmoth, when Laurefindël corners him some months later to ask, admits that Ecthelion will not even look at him, and eventually, when the year of mourning has passed, there comes a day when Ecthelion does not leave his own House and his own lands any longer.

It is a kind of silence, of anger and of grief, that Laurefindël cannot take. For the first several months, he tries to give his lover space and time in which to grieve, but eventually, Laurefindël realizes that Ecthelion's guilt may lead him to withdraw from the lands of the living entirely. This breaks Laurefindël's resolve to let Ecthelion be faster than anything else could, and from that day forth, he attempts to reach Ecthelion.

The physical part of this is challenging enough, for the guards at the door of the House of the Silver Fountain turn him away the first time. And then the second, and the third, and the fourth, and the fifth as well, so that eventually Laurefindël determines he will have to enter his friend's House by stealth.

It is a chill winter night, sharp with cold and laced with clouds, when he makes his attempt. A light fog hangs low over Gondolin as Laurefindël makes his quiet way down back-alleys and past trade entrances on his way to reach the House of the Silver Fountain – only to find, once he is there, that the same fog has left every exposed stone in the city dripping with wet, so that he nearly falls several times, cursing softly with each one, as he attempts to climb the low back wall, then to scale high enough that he can reach a window to jimmy open and tumble through. 

When he has righted himself with a snort for the hard landing – atop a half-empty sack of potatoes, and then the bare stone floor right beneath it, by the feel of things – Laurefindël finds himself in a storeroom of sorts on the first level of Ecthelion's house. At this hour of the night – and on a cold night like this one, in particular – Laurefindël knows that there should be activity still in the kitchen, as cooks and staff bustle about preparing warm drinks and carrying logs away to bank fires in the upstairs rooms, but matters are not so here. Here, all is cold, and dark, and still, and Laurefindël creeps from the storeroom to the kitchen, and then the kitchen to the corridor, entirely unchallenged.

Eventually, Laurefindël feels foolish for hunching his back and creeping his way about a dark manse where not a soul seems left to see him. Eventually, he straightens to his usual height and places his feet with only the usual amount of care, and with new resolve, he sets off to find Ecthelion, more concerned than ever about his fellow lord.

But his former lover is not in his personal chambers, whose furnishings, and indeed the very air, hang rank and swirling with dust. Nor is Ecthelion in the great hall of his home, or in his study, or in his library, and instead, the rooms are still and silent in a way that Laurefindël mislikes greatly.

And it comes to his attention, gradually, that the fog from the street beyond has somehow followed him inside. More than could have come through the one little window that he had opened to get inside; more as if that fog is coming from within the House itself.

Laurefindël shivers despite himself. The last place in which he saw such airs had been –

Oh. _Oh._

Had been _Nan Dungortheb itself_.

Any last vestige of concern that he might be discovered trespassing in another's home vanishes from Laurefindël's mind. The only thought remaining to him in his panic is that _he must find Ecthelion._ So back through the House he races, checking every corner that he had before – bedchambers, great hall, study, library, kitchen – and anywhere else he can think to try, but finding nothing until he realizes –

The _cellars_. Which are easily the deepest – and darkest, dankest – part of even such a grand House that might belong to a Lord of Gondolin.

Heedless of his own ringing, booted footfalls now, Laurefindël races down the last passageway from the kitchen. Again, not a soul comes to see him or stop him; not a soul seems to inhabit the great House during the dark hours. And although the great oak door leading down into the cellar is locked, his straining ears seem to make out some sound somewhere behind it, so Laurefindël throws his weight against the wood – again, and again, and again, with his boot applied directly to the lock every so often for variety – until something on the other side gives and he all but falls, panting, though the suddenly open doorway.

And there, finally, is Ecthelion, sitting right on the damp floor amidst a sticky mess that smells of strong spirits and even Laurefindël takes care not to examine so closely. He is half-dressed, and fully surrounded by half-tapped barrels, tipped-over bottles, and the curtain of his own hair; he does not raise his head in acknowledgement of Laurefindël's entrance, or even seem to realize that he is no longer alone in the depths of his House.

Instead, as Laurefindël watches in shock, Ecthelion raises one wavering arm, fist clenched shaking but tight about the neck of yet another bottle, as if in toast to the wisp of mist that hangs floating before him.

"To you, in the memory of the lost Lady of Gondolin whom we left behind," Ecthelion whispers, and Laurefindël is horror-struck by the weakness, the wavering notes, of that much-beloved voice. "As you have demanded of me, shade, so I toast her, damn you!"

Then he knocks back another third of the bottle clenched in his hand, pale throat rising and falling with the efforts, and the little wisp of mist seems to dance and shiver with delight.

Nothing about this little wisp, dangling there in the air before Ecthelion, resembles Irissë in the slightest: she who was Aredhel, the Shining Lady of the Noldor and sister to the King of Gondolin, larger than life and twice as bright, as loud, as loving. Laurefindël knows it is not her, it cannot be her, and nothing about Ecthelion's words to it quite suggest that either. And yet – there _is_ the suggestion of a face to the mist, though it is a face with hollows where its eyes should be and a gash of empty space where its mouth might lie.

He must scuff his boots against the stone, or make some other sound, for suddenly this wisp of mist turns its grim visage upon Laurefindël himself where he still stands gawking in the cellar doorway. And to his horror, Laurefindël finds utterly himself rooted in place, unable to do more than watch with widening eyes as that gash of a mouth suddenly yawns open into deepest darkness, and the mist itself expands until it seems to fill all the room, its gaping maw bending lower over Laurefindël until surely it will swallow him whole - - -

But then there is a body – a chill and shaking body, but a body nonetheless – interposed between the maw of the mist and Laurefindël himself. Ecthelion is shaking as if he has not stood upon his own two legs for days or longer, but he plants himself between Laurefindël and the mist as if nothing could have prevented him being there, and he raises his shaking arm as if to ward off evil.

"A deal was made!" he cries, his voice thin but frantic. "You would not touch them, so long as I did not!"

_But has your deal been kept, Elda,_ comes a voice from that ghastly gash, whisper-quiet and silken-smooth. _Look to your hand now, eh?_

And it is true: Ecthelion's hand is indeed clutching Laurefindël's wrist, as iron-tight as if it is his last line into the world of the living. When he sees this too, Ecthelion lets go with a haste and a gasp as if he has been burned, but the wisp of mist is already making a wretched wet and gurgling sound.

Perhaps it is meant to ape or pass as laughter; instead, it rather sounds like blood gurgling in the back of a dying throat.

_Fire and water take you, then,_ comes the voice of the mist, still gurgling in that horrible way. _Fire take your lover, Ecthelion of the Silver Fountain, and water take_ you!

**_May you struggle for breath as we did!_ **

**_MAY YOU SUFFOCATE IN SMOKE AND SPRAY AND SOUND AS WE DID!_ **

Then the maw of the mist is open and descending upon them once more, leaving Laurefindël with time for nothing more than a cry of anger, a rough push that moves the shaking Ecthelion behind himself and shields him – and then the damp and putrid dimness of that misty maw has closed over and about them both, swallowing them up together in a darkness so much like that of Nan Dungortheb –

Only to dissipate around them a heartbeat later, without another sign or sound to mark its passage.

Behind Laurefindël, Ecthelion begins to weep: a sound both pained and painful, as if each sob is wrenching itself from the depths of his depleted soul. Alarmed, Laurefindël turns just in time to catch his lover in his arms, where he is struck anew by how frail Ecthelion has become and how dark the shadows beneath his eyes have dug their trails.

"Where has it gone?" Laurefindel demands, but Ecthelion only shakes his head.

"Gone," he whispers. "It has gained what it wished; a curse upon my head, and yours, for disturbing its wretched hunt in that terrible valley. And no doubt it could find an interested ear, too, should it wish to whisper of where we are, sitting arrogant in the security of our walled white city!"

Ecthelion's story comes out in fits and starts over the remainder of the winter, a time in which Laurefindël sequesters them both in the House of the Golden Flower and devotes all his time to caring for his friend. Something had taken ahold of him as they left Nan Dungortheb, Ecthelion eventually admits, his voice stilted and faltering; had told him that his anger and his grief would be turned against the rest of those who had returned alive from its clutches, unless he concealed its existence and fed it with his own spirit. With every new scrap of the story Ecthelion reveals, Laurefindël shakes with a mingled rage and longing to gather Ecthelion into his arms, but he restrains himself to await the other's decision.

And eventually, Ecthelion comes to welcome touch again. Eventually, he beckons for Laurefindël to join him in bed, though with a shyness now that he had never evinced before; eventually, they relearn what Nan Dungortheb and its shades had sought to strip from them, and what Ecthelion had thought he was giving up forever, though he had given it up gladly when he thought he was ensuring the safety of both friend and lover.

But some things they cannot quite recover. Ecthelion does not laugh quite so loud or carefree as he did before they left Gondolin; the shadows of his grief and his sorrow for their lost lady remain dark in his eyes.

And so some things remain, even when first springtime, and then summer, come to Gondolin, banishing the last of the mists that drape her Houses and towers otherwise. Even when Laurefindel begins murmuring to Turukano about having an emergency path out of the city, should the need ever arise. And even when Irissë herself _does_ come home not even a ten-year later, trailed by a mist-pale boy with death-dark eyes – a child who cannot understand why both Ecthelion and Laurefindël shy away from his innocent gaze in the ways that they do.

And when death does come for them, not so many centuries later, Laurefindel has just enough time to wonder where Ecthelion might be, and to pray that his lover at least has remained with those who took the tunnels out, thus escaping his part of the doom that was so gleefully foretold for them.

But then the Balrog's maw is opening, belching heat and hellfire that even the Elda cannot withstand, and Laurefindël, shaking, turns to meet it – standing in defiance as he always has, even if he cannot shelter Ecthelion with him this time.


End file.
